JB

The first ending of Lunar 2 got me all teary-eyed the first time. Not knowing about the epilogue(SegaCD did NOTHING to inform you of it) makes it a bit more moving. There've probably been a few others. Aeris Dies is NOT one of them. That was just annoying.

According to Wikipedia (whom we all love and trust) it's been changed far more often than that. I highly doubt they'd still be using the UT1 engine today. No, according to Wikipedia, it's still using Unreal, though almost all of it has been stripped out and recoded. "Broussard has stated several times that the only parts of the Unreal engine that are still part of their code base are UnrealScript, the networking code, and the UnrealEd. Everything else (except the current physics engine) has been written from scratch by 3D Realms. " They are still, technically, an Unreal game. Wikipedia is ALMOST self-contradictory in this case. They quote Broussard's statement that none of Unreal is left except the scripting engine, networking code, and editor, then immediately following that with the statement that the game engine "contains parts of an early version of Unreal Engine 2.0" and phrase the following paragraph in such a way as to imply that's why Forever supports pixel shaders, normal mapping, and HDR lighting. They also state that the Forever code was forked off from the main Unreal tree in 2001. I've seen this mentioned in official statements as well, with the logic being that the modifications 3D Realms had made weren't easily ported forward into the new revision of the engine. They later say "On March 20, 2007, Scott Miller explained in an interview with YouGamers that they were still using the Unreal Engine, albeit a heavily modified version at this point" under the "Conflict with Take-Two" heading. I'll take the lead developer and company owners' word over Wikipedia in this case even though they aren't really in conflict. Forever forked before Unreal 2 was finished. Arguably, it's 3 changes, from Quake2 to Unreal to UT to Unreal2Beta. Also arguably, it's one, since the Unreal engine code is in constant update as far as developers are concerned. The Doom3 engine switch was never more than a rumor, and the physics engine is different than the game engine(in fact, the physics engine was the last vestige of Unreal to be removed). And in fact, Wikipedia says this, in an obfuscated manner. The Doom 3 rumor is tucked away under "Conflict with Take-Two" and the Karma physics engine mentioned under "Physics Engine Switch" is from the Unreal engine.

The game engine's only been changed twice. From Quake to Unreal then from Unreal to Unreal Tournament. Of course, as they've hacked features in and revised old features, it's gotten so that the engine is UT in name only. That's been Duke's big problem. 3D Realms is run by programmers, not businessmen. And George Broussard has been unwilling to freeze the feature set, because NOT implementing a technology interferes with his goal of making the best Duke Nukem game he can. And ANY code is portable, provided you have the right compiler. You don't have to use a specific game engine to make games on the 360 instead of a PC. You might not make the most EFFICIENT use of the hardware(saym, if you ignore the GPU and put all the work ont he CPU), but that doesn't mean it can't be ported.

My Final Fantasy cartridge is like that.Apparently it had a bum weld, and the underside of the battery broke loose from the lower tab. In the US, no. But ye olde Action Replay exists in other nations. I have no idea if the save functionality existed in them at that time. If I recall, SNES copiers can backup and restore saves.

Or even the Virtual Boy's 3D Tetris. Which I liked more than Blockout due to the actual depth. I'm not good at judging fake depth. Same reason I hate 3D platformers.

Well, the advantage of the Pocket was obvious. It was pocketable. Had a far better screen than the brick, too. Given the age of the original at that point, it was hardly an unjustified move. The Color was a new system. It may be a hackish stopgap release, but it's hardly fair to dump it in with the Pocket as a re-case. The SP "fixed" the GBA's unlit screen, and made it more compact. It was a direct response to consumer complaints about the original GBA, so bitching about it seems counter-productive. (IMO, it was a massive step backwards, and I'm proud to own an original-style GBA) SP2 isn't really a huge change, despite hype to the contrary. It's a new LCD in the same old system. I'd bet money that the only reason it exists is so Nintendo could use the same LCD supplier for both the GBA and the DS. In another era, it would've been a totally unadvertised change. As-is, it was treated like adjustments to breakfast cereal. "New tastier backlit marshmallow display!" The Micro... shouldn't exist. They should've just axed the GBA in favor of full DS focus at that point. Though I gather it has a place in Japan, where the size makes it competitive with cellphone gaming. Maybe they should've just left it japanese-exclusive, so people could gripe because Japan was getting awesome exclusive systems again. So basically, I don't really see the argument, except for the Micro(partially) and DSLite. Speaking of DSLite... Why can't Nintendo make a good d-pad anymore? The GBA/GameCube d-pad was horrible. The DSLite pad isn't any better. I'm just assuming the SP/DS1 pad isn't any good either, having not spent any real time on either.

I've never heard of 2600s destroying power supplies like that. Perhaps AJ could chime in on this? It's because of the connector they used. It's possible to short the power supply when you connect it to the system or disconnect it from the system. If it's connected to AC while you're messing with the system plug, there's a chance you can blow it out. Probably just a fuse, but they're sealed pretty good. Dunno how often it happens, but it does happen. So connect AC last, and disconnect AC first. Or keeep some spare 9V supplies handy.

I think the big issue is that the GameBoy Color was never INTENDED to be a real system. It was nothing more than a stopgap measure. It's very short shelf life is testament to that fact. At the time it was created, Nintendo was seeing something they hadn't seen in a very long time. The Wonderswan was actually damaging their portable marketshare in Japan, and the NeoGeo Pocket was posing a threat(ironically, the less-successful NGP would see a widespread US release, while the Wonderswan would never make it to the West). But hey, overclock the original Gameboy, add a color hack(which Bandai and SNK immediatly added to their systems too), and you can stave off the competition long enough to develop a REAL next-gen handheld. It was never more than a quick and dirty hack meant to throw a wrench in the gears. The GBA was a rushjob, but it was at least one with some actual thought put into it.

When they shut analog TV off, they're going to recycle that portion of the spectrum for other wireless applications. The theory is that they'll saturate the area more than the existing TV broadcasts do. Which isn't TOTALLY without merit, as you can pack channels closer on a modern digital comm standard than a 60-year-old analog video standard. And there's no guarantee the channels will be the same width as TV channels, or that they'll line up properly. So while the option of 2 and 3 or 3 and 4 may CURRENTLY guarantee a clear channel, there's no guarantee that this will be true in the future. And I don't think lead is a good RF shield. Line your house with aluminum foil wallpaper instead. It's a proven technology.

And of course, there's the 2600's ability to blow up power supplies when you plug/unplug them. Maybe Atari just wasn't destined to make reliable hardware.

*sigh* Once upon a time, I would've voted Lunar. <- But after 4 remakes(2 of SS, 1 of EB, one of Magic School, which probably shouldn't count anyways), about 3 dozen ports of the remakes, and the complete fiasco that was Dragon Song... The Lunar series has been run into the ground, through the ground, and out the other side. Game Arts is dead. A hypothesis further supported by Grandia EXTREEEEEM and Grandia 3.

STUDIO 2!!!!! Or maybe Genesis.

Wait... if your TV only has composite inputs, it's not even an HDTV. Whether it's upsampling or HD source material, it doesn't matter because it can't display either one. If you mean component, you CAN watch HD-DVDs in HD, you just can't upsample DVDs. And IMO, upsampling is a moot point.

DVD actually raises the cost of manufacture due to licensing. As has been noted, it's a moot point, as pretty much everyone ALREADY owns 8 CD players and 3 DVD players. And I don't WANT another CD player if it's the same kind of half-assed effort we've seen in recent years. A bad CD player is more insulting than no CD player. Also your argument can be applied to anything post-NES except for the GP32 and GP2x. Maybe Dreamcast, as it allows unrestricted CD-ROM execution, though it's far less dev-friendly. Without homebrew you are ALWAYS restricted to a subset of the system's capabilities. Or do you have ANOTHER reason why you can't run arbitrary MPEGs off a CD-R on your PS2, even though it ALREADY has a built-in hardware MPEG2 decoder?

No heartbeat?!?!?! Who's bright idea was that? BRING BACK DIGITAL ECLIPSE!

You're half-right. It's actually the DVD Forum's licensing restrictions, not FCC regulation. They don't allow analog upsampled video signals, with a special exemption for VGA due to the fact that it would make PC DVD players almost useless if the exemption wasn't there. No one's really sure WHY that restriction exists, but it does. As far as the thread topic: You seem to be confused. The HD-DVD player is for playing HD-DVDs. Not upsampling standard DVDs. The 360's built-in DVD player upsamples DVD nicely, provided you use the proper cable(see above). As far as comitting to HD-DVD or BluRay... I'd wait until the format war settles down. I personally think one format WILL emerge as the victor, once people realize that their nice shiny new HDTV needs HD material to be of any use. Right now, most consumers don't realize that more than a new TV is needed to view HD material, or that DVD ISN'T HD. Many of them are returning their TVs, stunned because the picture on the sharper better TV looks WORSE. Of course, they don't understand that what they're seeing is crap that was hidden by their blurry old SDTV, and if they fed their new HDTV a proper diet, it'd look lightyears better.. .... Damn. I used to have a picture of upsampled DVD next to a true HD source, but I seem to have deleted it.

Rumor has it that the FCC has stricter rules about electromagnetic interference than they have in Japan, so the design had to be changed to accommodate extra metal shielding in the case. I wonder how many other systems this has affected when making the transition across the Pacific... Meanwhile Commodore used CARDBOARD sprayed with metallic PAINT as RF shields ? I call myth on that one. I'm pretty sure the only reason the NES was redesigned was to make it less "toy-like." Which is ironic given Nintendo's all-out child-friendly marketing. Is the Japanese top-loader compatible with the FDS? --Zero But of course. As far as the FamiCom is concerned, the FDS is just a REALLY funny-looking cartridge. And the flat top means that it's physically compatible, so... plug and play, as they say.

Game-engine cutscenes are VASTLY more space-efficient than video, as well as preserving a cohesive visual appearance. To cite a rather extreme appearance example... remember how FF7 kept flipping between cute little SD characters and realistically-proportioned ones? The point is that the last generation of hardware was powerful enough that video cutscenes simply aren't needed anymore. Lower-quality video is just due to higher compression ratios. MPEG2(used on DVD and I'd be willing to bet on almost every Dreamcast, PS2, 'Cube, XBox, 360, PS3, and Wii game using video as well) isn't a single compression level. It lets you set the compression ratio to any of a number of levels. Unfortunately, there's tradeoffs. MPEG is a lossy format, so higher compression results in lower video quality. The MPEG decoder was completely un-necessary for anything is why it isn't there. The lack of CSS decryption is due to cost. *shakes head* First, if you mean the connection I think you do, that's an analog output. In the case of a PC, the CD/DVD drive contains the CD decoding software within it(to the degree that some contain a basic CD player that's fully independent of the PC), and passes the final audio to the sound card. I doubt both that the Wii's DVD drive HAS redbook decoding in it* AND that the Wii has a line-in connection on it's sound chip. But PCs don't use that capability very much anymore anyways. Too sensitive to interference. Reduces the audio quality a lot. They just send the info down the data cable, and let the CPU figure it out. *Open a Playstation up some time. Or a Dreamcast. The drive is pretty minimal. It's just the mechanical parts, with all the electronics supplied by the system. Very non-standard. Very cheap, too. Second, audio CDs are read in a far different manner than data CDs or DVDs. While the drive can read audio disks if fed the correct instructions(provided one simple assumption is met), is it really worth the effort to code a reader/player for the sake of a single bullet-point feature that hasn't really been relevant for most of a decade? The PS2's CD player was a really half-assed job. It seemed pretty clear it was only there to pad the bullet list. Same for Dreamcast and XBox 1. I'm more surprised the 360 has a decent CD player than anything else. Third, as implied in the last parenthetical note, there's no guarantee the drive can even READ CD media. CDs and DVDs use different laser wavelengths. Reading both media types complicates the drive and raises the price. I admit to not knowing what specifically is in the Wii, but I doubt Nintendo would spring for the more complex drive if they had an option. (If someone knows the Wii can physically read CD media, feel free to chime in).

You can get an American NES just like that one. It's called a Top Loader and it comes with the dogbone controller. Not EXACTLY like it. It's RF out instead of composite video out. And the top has a half-circle bulge where the cart slot is instead of being flat(maybe needed for stability with the huge NES carts?). Most importantly, however, the J version has the coveted expansion port, used for 3D goggles and a whole bunch of other japanese accessories you don't have.

The DOA2 in DOAUlitmate is a new version, built using the DOA3 engine. It's WAY prettier than the Dreamcast or NAOMI versions(no slur on the DC/NAOMI hardware intended).

I gotta be honest as a great gamer I tend to hate games Im not good at, so others prob feel the same. I don't hate games I'm not good at. Many of them I find to be quite enjoyable. Or at least infuriating enough that I continue playing out of sheer hatred and a desire to brutally abuse the game and everything in it. Jaws is just plain BAD.

Ooo, now that has some potential! I would not be surprised if his next game somehow involves killing frogs. ..Al His love of animals apparently doesn't extend to amphibians.

I have a question. Do the CD+32X rips work as regular Sega CD games if I don't have a 32X? Don't feel like wasting a CD to find out, and when I run them in Kega, it automatically boots them as a 32X game. No. They are 32x ONLY.

Maybe he actually meant "twenty-dollar bones" and he actually had to buy a set of bones worth $20 and trade them for the Zelda game in a crude barter form of commerce.

It's more that the TV is no longer driven by the signal coming in. The video signal coming to a tube TV is, more or less, It's got a computer in it that translates the incoming waveform into a bitmap, scales it to the display's native resolution, and passes it to the panel. If it sees timings it wasn't programmed for, it chokes with varied effects. They usually don't have a lot of error-handling, so strange and unpredictable things can happen. The best example I've heard of was a LCD PC monitor that threw a "signal out of range" error box when a Genesis was hooked up... on top of the Genesis image that it was successfully rendering.